'Passionate conversation' in schools is a good thing

By GENE POLICINSKI | Florida Voices
Published: June 13, 2012 Updated: June 13, 2012 - 12:00 AM

No doubt it's more efficient to run a school without any disruption, complaint or controversy.

But does an absence of challenges, conflicts or intellectual collisions automatically make a school better? Make teaching more effective? Learning any more likely to occur?

James Yoakley, an 11th-grade English teacher at Lenoir City High School in eastern Tennessee, was transferred recently to Lenoir City Middle to teach eighth-grade English — in a move that Superintendent Wayne Miller said was "for more efficient operation of the school."

Yoakley was chairman of the high school's English department and faculty supervisor of the high school's newspaper and yearbook for the past six years. His "efficient" transfer follows two controversies in the past school year involving LCHS student publications.

http://www2.hernandotoday.com/news/hernando-news/2012/jun/13/haopino1-passionate-conversation-in-schools-is-a-g-ar-415226/